EOS presentation

Employment, broadband, mortgages, oh my!

• This summer I have worked on wrangling data for the Charlottesville and Eastern Shore regions on the following:
  • Employment (number of jobs in a spatial unit, proportion of jobs that are high- or low-wage);
  • Average commuting distances (calculated based on the latitude and longitude of the central points of home and workplace census blocks);
  • Broadband availability (based on data from the Federal Communications Commission);
  • And more recently, mortgage application data reported through the Home Mortgage Disclosure Act

Example data source

• These data come from the Longitudinal Employer-Household Dynamics (LEHD) program at the US Census Bureau and state labor market information offices.
• Data are from 2018 (most recent data) and spatial units are based on the 2010 census.
• Some limitations:
  • jobs counts do not include those working in defense-related industries;
  • jobs for companies with multiple branches are often all coded in the same location;
  • student workers are unlikely to be represented because they are typically not covered by unemployment insurance;
  • data presented here are aggregates of the census block-level data, and there are some blocks with missing data.

Mapping the data

## [1] TRUE

All jobs

pal <- colorNumeric("plasma", reverse = TRUE, domain = cvl_lodes$alljobs)
leaflet(cvl_lodes) %>% 
  addProviderTiles("CartoDB.Positron") %>% 
  addPolygons(data = cvl_lodes,
              fillColor = ~pal(alljobs),
              weight = 1,
              opacity = 1,
              color = "white", 
              fillOpacity = 0.6,
              highlight = highlightOptions(
                weight = 1, fillOpacity = 0.8, bringToFront = T
              ),
              popup = paste0("GEOID: ", cvl_lodes$w_blkgroup, "<br>",
                             "Number of jobs: ", cvl_lodes$alljobs, 2)) %>% 
  addLegend("bottomright", pal = pal, values = cvl_lodes$alljobs, 
            title = "Number of jobs", opacity = 0.7)

Wages

Proportion of low-wage jobs (earnings $1250/month or less) in each SU

pal <- colorNumeric("BuPu", domain = cvl_lodes$lowwage_p)
leaflet(cvl_lodes) %>% 
  addProviderTiles("CartoDB.Positron") %>% 
  addPolygons(data = cvl_lodes,
              fillColor = ~pal(lowwage_p),
              weight = 1,
              opacity = 1,
              color = "white", 
              fillOpacity = 0.6,
              highlight = highlightOptions(
                weight = 1, fillOpacity = 0.8, bringToFront = T
                ),
              popup = paste0("GEOID: ", cvl_lodes$w_blkgroup, "<br>",
               "Prop. low-wage jobs: ", round(cvl_lodes$lowwage_p, 2))) %>% 
  addLegend("bottomright", pal = pal, values = cvl_lodes$lowwage_p, 
            title = "Proportion of <br> low-wage jobs", opacity = 0.7)

Proportion of high-wage jobs (earnings greater than $3333/month) in each SU

pal <- colorNumeric("BuPu", domain = cvl_lodes$higwage_p)
leaflet(cvl_lodes) %>% 
  addProviderTiles("CartoDB.Positron") %>% 
  addPolygons(data = cvl_lodes,
              fillColor = ~pal(higwage_p),
              weight = 1,
              opacity = 1,
              color = "white", 
              fillOpacity = 0.6,
              smoothFactor = 0.3,
              highlight = highlightOptions(
                weight = 1, fillOpacity = 0.8, bringToFront = T
              ),
              popup = paste0("GEOID: ", cvl_lodes$w_blkgroup, "<br>",
                             "Prop. high-wage jobs: ", round(cvl_lodes$higwage_p, 2))) %>% 
  addLegend("bottomright", pal = pal, values = cvl_lodes$higwage_p, 
            title = "Proportion of <br> high-wage jobs", opacity = 0.7)